Communities affected by SEU call for highest level of scrutiny

PORT HOPE – Three local citizens’ groups announced on May 19 that they have joined other groups across Ontario to request a fuller, independent investigation into Cameco Corporation’s plans to introduce a new nuclear fuel cycle involving enriched uranium.

The three groups are Families Against Radiation Exposure (F.A.R.E.), the Port Hope Community Health Concerns Committee (PHCHCC), and Port Hope Nuclear Environmental Watchdogs (N.E.W.).

They held a press conference at the Port Hope harbour that was attended by reporters and photographers for the Toronto Star, the Port Hope Evening Guide, and the Northumberland News.

Simultaneous press conferences were held in Kincardine, near Cameco’s Bruce nuclear reactor site, and in Ottawa, where the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission was presented with affidavits spelling out the concerns of people living in the affected communities.

The message was conveyed to the CNSC by Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, a branch of an international organization of environmentalists led by Robert Kennedy Jr. The organization is intervening in the hearings to consider an environmental self-assessment of the Bruce nuclear power operation, which is partically owned by Cameco. The Bruce licence would allow the plant to operate until 2048 and to use SEU fuel, which would be blended by Cameco in Port Hope.

Waterkeeper is attempting to have the Bruce and Port Hope SEU environmental assessments merged to encompass the concerns/effects of SEU from the beginning to the end of its life cycle – that is, from Cameco in Port Hope, to Zircatec, along the province’s roads, to the Bruce plant, and finally to waste.

Waterkeeper’s goal is to ensure that SEU is not created or used in the province of Ontario without first undergoing the highest level of scrutiny possible. That would involve an independent panel review, ordered by the federal environment minister. Under the present screening process, Cameco is doing its own environmental self-assessment, and the CNSC is responding to that. Several key concerns of residents, such as health testing of humans and the economic impact on the affected communities, are outside the scope of the screening process.

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